#just because sometimes my plurality sucks

[imjustaf444keriguess]

oh boy this is long i do not have the brain power or energy to argue properly but like...

what if someone was plural and felt euphoria and joy in being themselves as multiple people? what if they experienced a form of plurality that wasn't caused by a disorder?

OCD isn't the only way you can have compulsions, depression isn't the only reason you might feel apathetic and down in the dumps, and DID/OSDD isn't the only way to have a plural identity. does that make sense?

being plural is a complex concept that is extremely personal too. it can be defined by euphoria and feeling comfortable in your own skin. as a system who has trauma, it's weird for you to insist that systemhood is defined by trauma alone. our experience as a system is not constant suffering, just like how our experiences with gender isn't constant dysphoria.

you're acting like it's so different but to me it's like "no listen MY bigotry is GOOD because i think this thing is SOLELY this one thing and can never be different! if you're different and don't experience my agonies you're just a faker"

transmeds would look at me not wanting to get surgeries and call me fake because i don't experience "real dysphoria" with my body, and that i'm claiming to be a trans person without suffering like they do.

i see the exact same thing with sysmeds, except with something that's still considered part of a disorder* in the DSM, so others are allowed to be hateful towards people with similar experiences of plurality because it's totally part of a disorder and can't be anything outside of that. it's not like most other disorder symptoms are experienced in non-disordered people sometimes! that never happens!

(* i think gender identity disorder is still technically a disorder bc of medical stuff but i also think that's a fine thing to have in the DSM, struggling with your identity and feelin like shit because of it and needing medical treatment for your gender and body is a valid experience. it's just not the only gender experience, same with plurality and systemhood)

tldr look in the mirror and reread your texts a bit because you really sound like a transmed just for systemhood

What the fuck is a sysmed.. You mean to tell me we're medicalizing... a medical disorder..? Oh no oh jeez so scary be careful I might TRAUMATIZE you with my SYSMED-NESS 😱😱😱😱

[lindwurmkai]

Just saw a comment along the lines of "weird how all those people identified as DID systems for a while and then suddenly never mentioned it again" so uh

Funny story. I don't know what happened but what it felt like from my end was that my system kind of unexpectedly fused (as in most or all system members became one person), I was fine with it and getting used to being Just Me for over a year, and then most recently I started experiencing symptoms of dissociation again (emotional amnesia mostly) and now everything is in shambles 👍

If anyone has moused over my username lately or visited my blog on mobile, now you know what that was/is all about. I don't understand what's going on yet so I can't tell you if I'm about to start referring to myself as plural again but what I can tell you is that I didn't make that up and get tired of my lies or anything, it was just not relevant for over a year 😎✌️

[wolfertinger666]

sometimes I doubt my plurality and think I'm just a faker but honestly I'm not surprised I am plural as well considering the shit I went through plus growing up in a doomsday cult. my own experiences are quite complex, and like I talk about it because I want other systems to know they shouldn't be scared or feel ashamed. it just sucks when people think they know me better than I do and try to fake claim me and that in result, messes with my own consciousness.

[voices-and-gemstones]

After seeing a post or two about "the future is singlet not plural" and a few other criticisms of the phrase, I wanted to toss my confused two cents in to ask for clarification.

I thought "the future is plural" was meant for like. DID & OSDD awareness to destigmatize the disorders.

That it was about how the future should allow for systems to seek healthcare as they need, and allowing the idea that final fusion and functional multiplicity can coexist as options for systems.

I don't think anyone should be traumatized to make the future plural. For us, The Future is Plural is about accepting systems and multiples that already exist and will form anyway and fighting for space in the world.

For example, when I told my friend I was trans she went "oh cool, so do you have a preferred name?"

When I told her I was a system, she became very uncomfortable. She was worried and didn't want to talk to others. She said it was okay as long as they didn't talk to her and I was the "original."

Seeing as I am not the original host or personality, but I have been our host and for several years now, this experience fucking sucked. It took a lot of trust to open up to her about this fact only for her to immediately jump to conclusions and show her biases.

I would have much preferred if she had just said "oh cool, so what's your name? Or is it the same?"

The future is plural to me means that saying "I have DID" isn't met with horror. Sympathy and pity, sure, the same way someone would if you said you had PTSD. It sucks to be a system sometimes and it sucks [understatement] to be traumatized to the point of splitting. But i don't want people to be scared of us/angry at us for existing.

We deserve to exist without being afraid.

Being told the future is plural is reassuring because it promises research and community and hope. Spreading trauma is not the point, and we honestly don't know what to think of the idea that it was ever intended as the point.

Am I misunderstanding this?

[ciozio]

Siffrin, Sif, Siffy, question from the "crowd": You're well familiar with the concept of "happiness" at this point and the Notez, and you've most likely already made the emotion connection with them both - especially with the former. Do you perhaps think this kind of thing could manifest with other emotions? Like some physical manifestation of anger, jealousy, or sadness even?

Just some food for thought. I'm sure you have a good amount by now, especially through this/these Notezs - Neetz? Notezi? idk how one would make "Notez" plural here, and I'm not even sure if we are multiple or just from one of them. - but some more from our question-abound buffet surely can't hurt too much can it?

✨️"Also, you're just one note that sometimes... changes shape?.. or size?.. it's like it changes depending on the melody or.. uh.. I guess question it's asking."

✨️"Also, I call them 'notez' when singular and plural.. but we can get confused pretty easily on it. Maybe notez as singular and... notes with an S as a plural..."

✨️"Pftt. Nah, nah. No one would even be able to tell the difference, they're both pronounced the same."

🌟"Well I can~"

✨️"Well, yeah, of course you can, because you're weird like that."

🌟"oh my feeeeelings~"

✨️"you suck"

🌟"thanks~"

[antiendovents]

i’m so sick of endo culture being everywhere on this website. we discovered our system only in january, and when we learned what endos were we instantly thought that idea was absurd. but recently a lot of our close mutuals are getting really loud about being pro endo, which we didn’t know at the time of becoming their friends. i feel so gross being mutuals with these people and publicly associating with them in the past, but i don’t want to cut them out of my life entirely because i’m still attached to them and i’m scared of being“problematic” on here since this is the only space where i can be myself. i don’t want to be rude to endos because they’re usually just traumagenic systems in denial, but i’m also so sick of them fetishizing and romanticizing such a serious fucking disorder. as much as i love my headmates if i could choose to be a singlet i would always do it in every life. i wish i didn’t have to pretend to be “neutral” on syscourse, whatever that means. the idea of endogenic “systems” is such chronically online shit. i wish they would just be ok with roleplaying or stop using our tags and our terms because jesus christ this is a dissociative disorder that resulted from trauma and plurality is not the only symptom of it.

-❄️

yeah. We found out about endos not long after joining Tumblr. By then though we already knew we were a system for a while; and the idea of endos was disgusting. It made us so angry we wanted to delete Tumblr as a whole for it. I get how you feel with the mutuals, we've gotten attached to people too and then had to unfriend them / block them later on due to their actions or their beliefs and it sucks but sometimes it's necessary. If you feel gross just interacting with them or having them before your mutual that isn't good, I would recommend trying to do so, but only if you think you can safely (as in you're ready mentally and you won't be harassed or anything). Your feelings of anger are valid, and while I won't condone being rude to them for no reason I will say that endos do not deserve respect; they are ableists, ableists do not deserve respect (don't go out of your way to harass them, but don't necessarily feel bad for blocking them or arguing with them if they come to you, you know?). They're disgusting and seeing them in the tags is just so horrible, it's like we're actively being mocked and everyone else is just closing their eyes and turning their backs on us. No one treats endos as what they are; ableists and it's kind of sad. It's sad because people act like it's "not that serious" or like we're "overreacting" when we complain or bring up how harmful they are.

(sorry rant)

[syscord-out-of-context]

Welcome !! to syscord out of context !!

[[ TL;DR: We're SOA (it/he), lmk if you wanna be anonymous and we got you, NSFW is fine (no porn tho), no discourse, we're pro-endo, images don't need to be from Discord or free of context. ]]

The collective name and pronouns are SOA and it/its ONLY (hy/hx/he auxillary), NO they/them or it&/you&.

There is already a syscord blog -- in fact it is where we learned the word "syscord" -- but it's anti-endo so thus this blog is born because we think we're hilarious but we often second guess sending screenshots involving PluralKit (especially as an introject) to regular Discord out of context and yk. Non-sysmeds make up a large part of the plural community, come on tales-from-syscord.

That said if you are anti-endo, we. don't care. No matter where you stand, this is a syscourse/discourse free zone, we're here to be silly, not fight.

NOW. Some... guidelines?

NSFW is allowed but nothing too explicit. I'll be using the nsfw and nsft tags though, and pretty loosely.

I will also do my best to tag any triggers (with the '[thing] tw' format). If any post misses something or other that you would like tagged (no matter how specific) you can absolutely ask and we got you.

Per the blog title, context is allowed! You can submit anything you want if it's not blatant discourse or porn pretty much. Again, we're here to be silly.

If you're worried whether or not something will be allowed, feel free to send it to us and ask. And if something submitted breaks the guidelines, we'll let you know too (non-anon asks can be answered privately btw).

Also it doesn't need to be from Discord, really we're just here to have fun, do whatever you want, man. Life sucks but we persist and sometimes we persist by being silly.

ALSO. If you don't want your base account (or any account) to be linked to the submission, just let me know when you submit it (or you can DM it) and I will upload the image for you so you're not connected to it.

Also I don't care what censoring you do or don't do with anything, they're your screenshots. It's largely up to your discretion, we're just the wall upon which you can post your memes.

And I literally don't care who follows me, just don't be a dick and all is good!!

Promo nabbing under the cut (let me know if you want to be untagged).

@fictive-culture @funnier-as-a-fictive @funnier-as-a-system @misc-system-culture-is @plurality-polls @pluralasking @pluralquotebook @plural-culture-is @intuspluric-culture-is @introjectheavy-culture-is @introject-culture @plural-positivity @multi-sourced-culture-is @multiplicity-positivity @multiplicitymemes

[delphientropy]

being a host who has a partner but no other alter is dating them is hard

when someone doesnt know who they are or were blurry or confused, we just tend to say were host

and of course because not many safe spaces exist outside of online communities, we have to just. be host anyway.

i dont know why they just say "i love you too" back to my boyfriend even if they dont mean it just to preserve his feelings. he knows were a system. he respects our boundries and he doesnt get upset when we switch and cant return his feelings . but some do it anyway. some dont even realize they arent me/host and do it

but we often dont realize we switch all the fucking time so. sometimes its weirdd...sigh

and sometiems we switch and that person doesnt know they have to yknow. go on simply plural. and track that they arent me anymore. so i talk to hima nd he assumes their me

and we also for some reason kind of struggle yo say whos fronting out loud sometimes? esp in middle of conversation. we just quietly change the simply plural and hope he notices TwT

its not that we feel uncomfortable around him either (quite the opposite, we collectively like him and view him as a safe person) but we also have a stigmatized mental disorder that could honestly put me in danger if i give away too much. so talking about being a system outloud outside of system servers and communities or communities that have systems is always hard. plus our other struggles in trusting/telling people how we feel.

we do trust him. i love him. very much. but at home i could never fucking say anything about me or mh mental health without my dad going on a tangent and it just doesn't help

and our general trauma forces us to think that when we open up no one will listen or respect our boundries (we do have a lot of boundry crossing trauma)

so yeah um being mentally ill sucks ass 0/10 dont recommend

[sophieinwonderland]

Wishing for anti-endos to loose all their friends and spaces and to be ostracized does not help pro-endos. It makes anti-endos even more set in their beliefs. It makes people who are on the fence go "yikes, I guess the anti-endos are right". I'm firmly pro-endo and your recent post makes me want to take some distance. This isn't how we gain allies.

I know, these people suck. I know, it hurts to constantly be excluded and hated for the way our brains work or the reason why they work that way. I know, many anti-endos are too far gone and aren't people that you or I can reason with unless they decide to unpack their shitty beliefs.

But posts threatening them is not the way to go. They already see us as the enemy. We don't need to add fuel to the fire. Let's make sure people who are on the fence or who don't know much about non-traumagenic systems see us acting in ways that make them want to listen to our side instead of the fakeclaimers. Let's make sure anti-endos who are starting to rethink their beliefs feel like it's safe for them to do so and to start listening to pro-endos.

I'm sure this post is gonna get lots of interaction. But if it makes people less likely to read your studies, to listen to your arguments, to hear out the systems messaging you about their experiences? That's all for nothing.

I... actually think adding fuel to a fire can be useful sometimes. As long as you can keep it a controlled burn.

I'm counting on most anti-endos on Tumblr who would be scrolling through the syscourse tag already having me blocked. They won't see my post.

I'm counting on neutrals probably not following my blog or the syscourse tag either one. And most of those that do follow syscourse have already made their minds up about me.

I made that post for a very specific audience. One that doesn't actually need anyone to fuel its fire because they've built an entire community on seeking out systems to mock and attack. They already cherry pick the worst posts they can find to keep their friend group indoctrinated. So adding one more to the pile shouldn't matter to that specific group.

I don't think anything I say is actually going to make them hate the endogenic community more than they already do because they're surrounded constantly by people who will always reinforce that very generalized hate.

But I do think I can direct that hate they already have. Focus it as much as possible on one specific person. Me.

And the more they see me as a threat, (whether or not I am,) the more hateful they respond to me, the more their community will crack.

Users will be more likely to break their rules, making moderation in their subreddit more difficult for the unpaid mod team who will hopefully start rethinking how much of their life they want to dedicate to a hatesub moderating an angry userbase with nothing to show for it.

And while a slim hope, I'm waiting for them to be pushed far enough for Reddit to ban the whole subreddit.

So yeah. I don’t mind tossing as much fuel on the fire as possible if there's a chance their ableist hatesub burns.

Besides... I'm not actually saying anything untrue.

Plurality IS going to become more accepted. They ARE losing the scientific argument. And anti-endos and cringizens WILL lose friends and community support as plural acceptance spreads unless they're willing to change. A safe space for endogenic systems can never be one that houses anti-endos.

This is not a threat. This is a promise. It's a natural result of progress. And I'll do my part to accelerate this. But it's going to happen with or without my involvement.

I'm just making sure that when it does and they go looking for someone to blame because things have gone bad in their lives and their bigotry caught up with them, they'll direct their anger toward me instead of anyone else.

(Although maybe they can direct it inwards too since, you know, it was their fault for being bigots. But I think that would be too much to ask for.)

[notvv0ltz]

Self

Alright everyone, this topic isn't going to be about an art but rather about self… Or selves (foreshadowing). I'm writing this because not much of people are describing their experiences in this complicated sense of self.

So, like… Originally this post was planned to go deep through my traumatic experiences, but then I realized that no one needs to hear that. And it was also mentally breaking to me, so I will mention things only briefly just to give a context.

Still, the warning stays the same: my opinion on such matter and use of terms may differ from your own, and it still stays as an extremely personal post from a mentally ill person, read at your own risk.

I'm a guy who lives in a much better place now with queer found family, but before that my life quite sucked. I can barely remember my childhood, but I know that my trust was betrayed, and I couldn't rely on people in real life at all for different reasons. Not going into details of this one, but I'll just say this: I feel physically unwell when people are angry at me, especially when they're gaslighting me, and that's not without a reason. There was also a time when one parental figure drank heavily since I was 4 and continues to do so in a "mild" manner. I also have a physical evidence that I was "too tired" when I was 6 already. Overall, there were situations which my brain perceived as not safe.

It all made me socially isolated and apathetic for a long period of time. And I also had a vivid imagination. So vivid that I could stare at ceilings for hours without moving. It became maladaptive at my worse periods of life and disrupted me from doing schoolwork. But out of every other ways to cope I could have at that time, this one was the most harmless.

This had its own consequences, though… Everything changed when I had a breakdown in teens and I started feeling someone patting my back, but no one was there. It was my character (if you know, you know), that since then lives rent-free in my head.

What that truly was is still unknown to me, like why he suddenly feels like a very real person talking to me and why his speech doesn't feel scripted at all. He progressed from being my protector from The Bad to someone with his own desires and urges that contradict mine. To someone who disagrees with me sometimes and gives me another perspective. To someone who feels differently. But at the same time, with a lot of similarities because, well, we share the same brain.

What did none of us expect is that there were times when he took control of the body. No one from outside notices anything different, but internally it was quite weird to hear myself in my head in a muted way, as if I'm in a backstage. And it was odd and agonizing even for him to control the body that didn't reflect at all his self-image. Every time it happens, we prefer to wait out when he goes back to the "backstage". He is very ashamed of his own existence, so if he ever makes an attempt to not hide, please be nice to him.

Even with such complications, I love him very deeply. Without him, I wouldn't survive, and I'm serious about this. He helped me to process emotions, "co-piloted" when I was in severe stress, he made me feel less alone and misunderstood.

I think, at it's core, it's a healthy coping mechanism. It's just that there are conflicts that are unresolved, and that requires a therapist. I also tried to fit in plural communities, but it did literally nothing good to us. We felt like we needed to qualify for the label and thought that I'm just asking for attention despite us documenting our "huh that's interesting" moments. Because I'm in a better state, the other guy in my head appears less, but that doesn't deny that I have something going on. I don't think that collapsing over a sudden change in feeling self means that we're just, you know, role playing. We should treat people in this confusing state better, even if it ends up that they weren't plural. The rampant fake claiming culture misses the fact that no person that didn't struggle in life would consider this label. You can easily make someone's health worse by not giving them a room to explore themselves and sometimes admit that they were wrong. So please, be kinder.

I hope this post wasn't a bit too much for this blog and was helpful to someone. I tried to cut off the details of my traumas, but it was crucial to note that without them nothing would've happened to me. I also prefer to use more broad terms over specific ones to describe our experience because we're still not sure what's going on. Thanks for reading.

[quoigenicfromhell]

okay okay, so i'll try not to get too long winded with this but it basically can be shortened down to this: syscourse used to run my life. and it sucked ass. i decided to you know, branch out in empathy after i was broken up with my partner a couple years ago and pro-endo and just generally more open system spaces saved our life. and also had us personally accept the fact we're not only trauma-based. so really, i think. syscourse can be fun, i love conversations about how different types of plural people can function. but we really need to stop treating calling people's entire existence fake as discourse, it's nottt. it's not.

Yeah, it really isn't. I was in the trenches of asexuality discourse when that was a thing and it destroyed the ace community on here, a vibrant community I was a part of fell apart because we couldn't escape the vitriol directed at us. It never stopped ace people from existing, or identifying as queer; it just drove us into smaller and smaller corners that were safe. I don't think syscourse has nearly that level or rather reach of vitriol, but it sometimes feels like anti-endos really want it to.

As far as the first part of your ask: good for you, I'm glad you were able to escape the trenches and find a more positive community to spend time in. I really think mixed/unlabeled spaces are a useful thing when it comes to getting out of an echo chamber and seeing how people can really get along and relate to one another when we aren't drawing strict lines in the sand of what only one group experiences. Chances are, the lines are way more blurry than that.

[self-loving-vampire]

I don't really want to reblog your post saying this because I feel like that could be annoying but I've gotten a lot into gacha games (specifically Bang Dream, Project Sekai, D4DJ, Blue Archive, and now Zenless Zone Zero, in that order) as a 25 year old plural trans failgirl and despite enjoying them I know they are bad for me and it is my policy to not recommend them

and basically every time I find myself posting gushing over their stories or whatever I feel the need to asterisk myself with "this is a gacha game so I'm not really recommending you check it out". And like, I don't know, I feel like I should say it and it's necessary but it also feels a little tedious I guess. Like, everyone who I follow and who follows me knows this already so aah. But also then again I thought I already knew that the psychological manipulation and gambling was bad and etc and I still ended up getting super OCD over it and losing a lot of time and money to them and I would not wish this condition on anyone else. Which I guess is a more than good enough reason to continue the asterisking even if it's tedious in the same way it's tedious to say "content warning" or "spoilers for _____" or tag anything bothersome so people can filter it and sometimes you might forget to but you gotta do it anyway.

Anyway I uh. I do have like fifteen years of game playing experience prior to the gacha games where I played no gacha games. So if that counts for anything my favorite games of all time (and these are all non gacha singleplayer games) range from like,

Psychonauts (1 and 2), Milk Inside a Bag of Milk, Subahibi, killer7, Night in the Woods, VA-11 HALL-A, Tsui Yuri ~Okaa-san ni wa Naisho da yo~ (the incest yuri visual novel), Shadow the Hedgehog, if found..., Kindred Spirits on the Roof, Dishonored, Gunpoint, Jet Set Radio Future, and most importantly Senran Kagura (but not the gacha one), and many others but I'll just stop typing them now

Also I recently played the System Shock remake, which is kino and beautiful

Anyway I hope this confession is allowed. I really like your posts and your ask box has a very confessional vibe to me sometimes so I still feel compelled to it. Um, yeah. I guess, play those games. And not necessarily any gacha games. (Do that at your own risk, but also probably, really, seriously don't)

I've been trying to write a more formal essay on how gacha games can have good things in them but unfortunately still suck but ironically it hasn't yet come together because I've been distracted playing the gacha games. Hopefully I figure out that problem... Maybe with drugs or something (please)

Yeah, I don't think they are entirely bad (I still look at and reblog horny pictures from some of them often) but I wouldn't play one of those again even with full confidence that I won't fall into a gambling addiction because even putting morality and financial risk aside the very fact that they are trying to push players into it ends up worsening the rest of the game design.

Games these days (not even exclusively gacha) are sometimes deliberately made more tedious and inconvenient just for the sake of selling a solution to these invented problems. Paying to remove some arbitrary limitation or to skip a grind, for example.

The controversy around the new Star Wars Battlefront 2 contrasted with the original game highlights this very clearly. Things that used to just be a part of the game included by default are now things you have to either gamble for or play for an unreasonable amount of time to unlock. It really did not have to be that way, as demonstrated by the original game.

I think if you have been playing them and noticed all the issues it might be worth it to ask yourself if you're actually enjoying yourself on the net. Not just if the games have something in them that's worthwhile but if they are actually a fun way to pass your time. Is it play, or is it a chore you put up with to avoid falling behind or missing out on the things you do like? Would you be missing on much if you engaged with the story through youtube videos instead of playing the game yourself?

And if you do end up deciding you could be having more fun with something else, it's not like there's a shortage of other games, especially if you look into older games. Many of these are free or easy to emulate.

Looking at your list I think we have different tastes but if you enjoyed things like System Shock and Dishonored then you could maybe look into the first Deus Ex, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, or Arx Fatalis.

(Also this is a confessional now? I guess it gives people an excuse to picture me dressed up as one of those ero anime nuns even as I maximize blasphemy and apostasy.)

[syscultureis]

Dose anyone else ever get into that kinda floaty dissociation space when their alone in front were your memories of your system and evidence for it kinda just...calmy and slowly disappear into the background and fizzle away, not in a panicked or angry "IM FAKING ALL OF THIS" way but just...their gone, you cant recall any memory of your system really and you quietly ease into the idea, almost like a mother childing her kid, that youve just been overexaggerating and it must be something far more mundane. Yeah my amnesia is bad but I just have autism and autistics have a hard time with memory in the same way. And yeah I have witnesses to switches and mountains of other examples but...their just so hard to remember that you must be remembering them wrong. Bonus points if your NOT alone and you and the other person convince yourselves/each other that your both just each others own thoughts. Or is that just a me thing? Cause i hate it more then when im panicky and scared im faking, at least then i can remember things and rationalize. Dissociation and amnesia are just mean and if this DID community wasnt here I would for sure still be convincing myself to ignore my system to this day because of how like EASY it is. I feel like its not talked about how much work you need to put in to actively fight your brains natural want to hide itself from you even years after your system coming out to itself and living plurally.

I've had this a lot, it really sucks

But what I've found is a lot of times, the brain doesn't want you to know about the system. So even after it's passed the point of return with discovery, it sometimes tries to just take it back

It fails most the time, cuz once you're aware of it it's very hard to forget, but sometimes the brain still tries

[polyamorouspunk]

Fully agree with you on the trans thing. It’s something I struggled with for a LONG time that I didnt *want* to be fully 100% trans. Like I fit in with trans people, I was transmasc, but I never felt *trans*. If that makes any sense??

People used to tell me all the time that I had to be trans if I checked xyz boxes. And I hated it. Now, years later, I’ve made it to a point that I just *am*. And it took me SO LONG to realize that was even an option. To just be myself without putting a label on it. I dont need to be fully cis or fully trans. Im just a little bit of everything and fully me.

It still confuses my queer friends. That I just *do not* care and dont put any importance on it. So its nice to see someone else with that opinion. Thank you

Yes!

Listen like I do not care if people reblog my posts and disagree with me. Like that’s you’re right as an individual. But what I don’t like is when I make a post talking about my identity and someone “corrects” me on it.

The problem with the push to be super inclusive, sometimes, is that people stop making it about who *wants* to be a part and who doesn’t.

I know people who are gay men who have 0 interest in being part of the LGBTQ+ community. Gay men who are like I’m not queer I’m not part of the community I’m just gay but I’m not identifying with the community in any way.

I know people who have described their “gender” to me almost verbatim the way that trans people have described to me their gender and have told me they do not consider themselves trans in any way, and it kind of sucks because I’m like… I know that if I were someone else they might put that label on that person even if that person doesn’t want it?

I’ve had people ON THIS BLOG send me asks telling me I am not trans and other people send me asks saying I’m not cis. Like lmao it’s so fucking funny pick one you guys. I gotta be one or the other- SIKE no I don’t. I’ve had people dump me over saying “I’m both cis and trans” which in hindsight seems kinda ableist because that was actually when I started IDing as plural so like. The idea you can’t be both is like. You know there are people with different experiences than you right. Like some common enough to be in textbooks. Not like some “out there” concepts like if you can grasp the concept of DID you can understand how perhaps to some degree a person can be different than their literal AGAB without being trans. Just for one example.

Sometimes I also fail to realize this but. When you reblog someone’s post, or comment on it, or send them an ask, etc… you are coming into THEIR space. I mean it very much went through my mind to be like “just ignore it” but I was like someone is coming onto MY post where I try and validate MY gender experiences and telling me people like ME are quite literally exactly what I’m talking about where I’m like actually I’m valid if I’m a little trans and outright saying “YOU AREN’T A LITTLE TRANS UWU” like. Hi it’s you you’re the problem you’re the people I’m validating myself to. Like I don’t care how politely and nicely you try and dress it up with inclusive language do not put me into a box I do not want to be put in because you think “that I have to be trans because I check xyz boxes” yeah literally. I know fully cis people who check “xyz boxes” and I ain’t out here telling them that actually they’re trans and valid for it. Like bro if you tell me you’re cis who am I to disagree.

In the near future you’ll never hear the words “I’m transgender” come out of my mouth directly. I might post it on here or say irl that I “dabble in transgenderism” but I do not outright say irl in person that I am transgender not because I’m “dealing with internalized transphobia” and “not ready to fully accept myself to be transgender in the real world instead of just offline” like no I just don’t ID as “transgender” period. Or you know what maybe I am but also who are you to say that’s what I am? How are you helping exactly? How is acting like I can’t “really accept myself for who I truly am” helping me any? Idk. Just because you have good intentions doesn’t make it better than the people who have bad intentions. Both are issues. Both are problematic.

Learn to go “actually it’s not my fucking business if someone is trans or cis or neither” and “they can call themselves whatever they want” and that includes NOT wanting to be included.

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

do you have any advice for writing long fics/series??? I have so many I've been wanting to write but the last times I've tried I always lost motivation, so now I'm scared to try 😭

Ohhh, been there. Okay, so I've done it two different ways, and odds are high that you've only tried one, so maybe whichever you haven't done before, do the other?

Method 1: Write it all, then post one chapter at a time only once complete. That's how I wrote my early multi-chapter series. I was so worried I'd get bored or stuck and bail before I did what I wanted to do, I made sure all of my chapters were written before I posted anything. If you're addicted to the serotonin of feedback, that's fine, find a writing buddy who will read your WIP so you're still getting some of that spark along the way, but don't put up anything public until you're all done and ready to rock and roll.

Side note: This is also a pretty good way to build a bit of a following on AO3. If you promise people up front that everything IS done and written and it WILL finish and you give them a regular posting schedule—a chapter every Tuesday or whatever—they'll subscribe and happily follow along because there's no risk. Short of you getting hit by a bus or something, I guess.

Method 2: If, however, you've tried the above and that's where you're getting stuck, do the opposite. Maybe sketch out some rough notes to yourself on where you want to end up with the fic, just so you know you're heading in the right direction, but then let go of the need for control a little and post as you go along. That's what I had to do for my two biggest fics because they took literal years. Actual literal years, plural. The fear of leaving things dangling might be more motivating than you realize.

Some things to remember:

It's okay to start small. Like, it's tempting to dive right into a mega-sprawling epic of a fic with 100 chapters or whatever, but it's also okay to... not... do that. Try a fic with a few chapters instead. Build that muscle. Get used to writing beyond oneshots. Pre-built structures like 5+1 might help you build that muscle as well.

Sometimes you just gotta... do it. Like, that sucks, I know, it would be nice if there were an easy trick, believe me. Like, the fic I am procrastinating on is not a long one, but it's kicking my butt and it's so frustrating. But I'm getting it done a literal line at a time—for every ask I answer, I make myself hop over into my doc and write another line. Some nights I'm literally messaging Audrey like "I just want to get one sentence done before bed." And I stack one sentence after another until it's done.

It's okay to procrastinate a little. Emphasis on little. It sounds like you get stuck, procrastinate some, then don't stop procrastinating, but it's okay to give yourself a little break. My two biggest fics spawned so many other fics because I would hop from the chapter I would be working on to my distraction fic... until I needed to be distracted from that fic and then my chapter was the distraction!

It's also okay to combine the above methods. For Nature and Nurture, my first big fic, I used Method 2 allllll the way up to, like, the last three chapters or so. I was so scared of fumbling it all at the end that I switched to Method 1 for the last chunk, made myself write it ALL, and didn't post anything else until it was all written.

You can do it!!

[emcandon]

hi, i just finished the archive undying, and i wanted to say that i really liked how much of the book was about disability in one way or another, beyond the ways that mech fiction is inherently about bodies. both the physical things like sunai needing glasses and veyadi's visor essentially being an adaptive device, and the mental, with the various passengers and mind melds bringing to mind plurality.

and to wrap all that in body horror! sometimes being a bodymind sucks and you gotta be a bone tree about it!

HI. yeah. i think it will not surprise ppl to learn that i wrote this book in the aftermath(/midst?) of rebuilding my body after it had tremendously shit the bed. before i got sick, i had preexisting beliefs about the nature of cyborg bodies in the vein of donna haraway, but reckoning with myself as a creature of illness and disability brought that all home in a new way.

it also meant that i found myself wanting to write about bodies that get fucked up, and that get better, but that don't ever go back to being the things they were, because they can't.

so it felt important for sunai's functional immortality to come with permanent problems -- and to make clear that though he comes from a place where the entity in charge was fully happy to alter your body in any way you pleased, some people didn't feel like having their bodies changed in various ways for various reasons.

conversely i didn't realize that veyadi's visor was legit a prosthetic until a draft or two in, at which point i had firmed up more of my sense of this book's deep interest in bodies and disability. but it felt v correct as well.

anyway hell yeah bone trees. may we all grow into ourselves and achieve some relief by the growing.